Mauro and Giovanni Trione to share the #31 CAAL Racing Chevrolet in the 2020 NWES season

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André Wiegold / Gian Luca Guigliawww.euronascar.com February 5, 2020

There will be another father-son team racing in the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series in April at Valencia, when Mauro and Giovanni Trione will join Sebastiaan and Michael Bleekemolen on the grid. Mauro Trione will drive the #31 CAAL Racing Chevrolet in the EuroNASCAR PRO (ENPRO) championship, while his son Giovanni will step from the Club Challenge (CC) to the EuroNASCAR 2 (EN2) championship.

Mauro Trione has been part of EuroNASCAR since 2018 and he finished third and second in the Challenger Trophy in his first two years in NWES. In a season of quite literal ups and downs, his best 2019 result was the 14th place he earned at Most, but the always smiling Trione showed a promising pace and is poised to battle for the top-10.

"I want to keep improving my performance and score top-10 finishes constantly," said the Swiss. "The new season will be more difficult when you look at the big names on the grid, but we moved in the right direction last year if you compare my lap times to those from 2018. Too many crashes hurt my score in the overall standings. This year, I want to grab the Challenger Trophy. In 2018 I was third, in 2019 I was second, so I know where I want to be in 2020."

Trione is excited to share the car with his talented son Giovanni: "For my son, we have to see where he stands after the first races. He needs to learn quickly, because the EN2 championship is not the Club Challenge. He is a very intelligent guy and I’m sure he will use this opportunity to improve race after race. With three full races under his belt, he will surely have a completely different approach when we head to Vallelunga in Italy."

"Giovanni was born in 1994 and I was in Imola that week testing the Ferrari F40. I left Imola immediately to go to the hospital in Bari and a few days after my wife left the hospital, I was back on the track for racing. It was not easy but I went around in the pits with a photo of little Giovanni in my hand that I showed everyone with pride. In 1995, I was on the podium in a Superturismo race in Italy and he was with me. I stopped racing after this success. Usually children find themselves competing in the same sport as their parents, but Giovanni followed that path when I started playing Golf after quitting racing. He played College Golf in the US, at the Queens University of Charlotte, in the heart of NASCAR. When I decided to start racing again in 2018, I owed him… that was the time his dream of racing came true."

There’s something unique for Mauro in this opportunity to share the #31 CAAL Racing Chevrolet with Giovanni.

"Personally it’s so special to have him with me in the team. In 2018, right after Tours, I was diagnosed with a bad cancer and I had two surgeries. Now I’m okay and I see life in a different way and this experience with my son is a special one. Time doesn’t come back and we need to live as many experiences as possible together, who knows what’s next?"

Giovanni was a close runner up in the 2019 Club Challenge after an exciting final at Circuit Zolder. The 25-year-old will climb the NWES ladder by joining the EN2 championship and the special classification of the Rookie Trophy in what will be his first ever season in the middle of a pack at the wheel of a race car.

NASCAR Whelen Euro Series / Stephane Azemard

"My goals for the 2020 season is to enjoy the full NASCAR Whelen Euro Series experience in the EN2 championship," said the Italian. "I want to have fun with the team and my friends at the track. I have no specific expectations but learning about the car and developing my racing style race by race."

About sharing the car with his father Mauro, Giovanni said: "It has been a dream for me since I was a kid. I always wanted to share a race car with him and while we did it already last year while I was competing in the Club Challenge, now we are fully connected by racing in the ENPRO and EN2 championships at all seven events across Europe. I’m really happy that everything worked out!"

The father-son combination of Mauro and Giovanni Trione will hit the track in the season opener at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo in Valencia, Spain, on April 25-26, 2020.